Re: Tula

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 17:51:05 -0000

> I'm certainly relaxed about this circumstance being within the
range of behaviour for Heortling clans. At base it depends on how strongly you emphasise Heortling communality. I've noticed two patterns of late: some players have an analogue model of 'my stead' as a small, almost nuclear single-lodge farm containing one family/bloodline. Others take communality more seriously, and see themselves as one adult member among many in a stead of four or five lodges and perhaps more than one bloodline.

<snip of much excellent and sensible material>

I'd add one more thought: most people won't have "their place" that is theirs and theirs alone. In other words, the carls will find a place to sleep at night on the benches (or maybe a sleeping shelf along the wall?). The cottars probably find a place on the floor. Certainly people have usual spots--think of a high school cafeteria. Take it further, it isn't just that you have no fixed spot in one building, you have no really fixed building either.

So, when needed you have to have space for the whole clan within fortifications, which might mean one central fort, or a few major fortified steadings. So you make the chief's mead hall, and the loom house, and maybe a few other buildings plenty big, so you can crowd the whole clan in if needed.

At the same time, when you are working on ploughing and planting, or harvesting, or herding, hunting, or fishing, you want to be near your work. You don't want to spend an hour walking out to the far fields in the morning unless that is the only way that you will sleep safely at night. So there may tend to be smaller hamlet like settlements near good fields, and small hourses, huts, or mere shelters in various places for herders and hunters.

I would expect that people would move between these various buildings with no particular thought of one of them being more their place than another. They might prefer one to another, but not because it was their place, just because they like being in the clan hall with all the hustle and bustle, or they like walking out in the morning and seeing the fields, or whatever.

So for example a young man might spend most of Dark season in the chief's steading, practicing at arms, drinking, singing, and periodically being forced to be useful. In Sea season he moves to a small settlement in the middle of the lands that his family farms, and helps with the planting. As soon as planting is done he follows the herds up into the hills, and stays in an isolated herders hut. At harvest he returns to the small steading to help with the harvest, and then the cycle repeats. The hut is probably empty most of the colder portion of the year, the "farm" is probably always occupied, but is fullest at planting and harvesting time. Younger married couples are the most apt to spend most of the at the smaller steading, as there they have more chance of spending time together. The "chief's stead" (or other important steads) will of course always be occupied, but will be at its emptiest during planting and harvesting, and at its fullest during dark season or when danger threatens.

My views here may be heretical, but I really think that if you asked a typical heortling where he lived he or she would answer something like "Amongst the Storm Oak clan," not "In the steading by whiteford on broken brook." Of course there will exceptions who always do live in one place, but I think Thunder Rebels defined most of those pretty well: certain specialists are almost always in the "chief's stead" because their work is constant, not seasonal, so there is on reason for them to move around.

All just IMO, feel free to pick my theories apart :)

--Bryan

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